Ever since November 2022, the EA movement has only seemed to know criticism and scandal. Some have even gone so far to declare that EA is dead or dying,[1] or no longer worth standing behind,[2] or otherwise disassociate themselves from the movement even if outside observers would clearly identify them as being ‘EA’.[3] This negative environment that EA finds itself in is, I think, indicative of its state as a social movement in decline.
I don’t think the claim “EA is in decline” is well-defended in this post. You link to a few naysayers here, but I don’t think that’s good evidence. “EA is in decline” is also self-fulfilling—it might decline if everyone’s saying it’s declining—so I expect some people say this because they want it to happen, not because they’ve reviewed the evidence and have concluded this is what’s happening.
Colleagues of mine can pull together more evidence against, but as two examples that are salient to me:
EA Global London 2025 is on track to be the biggest EA conference ever.
We expect to welcome more people to EA events (EAG, EAGx, EA Summits) this year than ever before.
I find that hard to square with “EA is in decline”. To be clear, I think the claim might be true, but it’s an important enough question that it deserves some more thoughtful study and data, rather than vibes on Twitter.
Hey Ollie, thanks for your feedback! It helped me understand some of the downvotes the post was getting which I was a bit confused by. I think you and perhaps others are interpreting the post as “Here are some case studies that show EA is in decline”, but that’s not what I was trying to write, it was more “EA is in decline, what historical cases can inform us about this?”
I’m not really arguing for “Is EA in decline?” in the post, in fact I’m just assuming it and punting the empirical evidence for another time, since I was interested in bringing out the historical cases rather than EAs current state. So the tweets are meant to be indicative of mood/sentiment but not load bearing proof. I do see that the rhetorical flourish in the intro might have given a misleading impression, so I will edit that to make the point of the piece more clear.
As for why, I mean, it does just seem fairly obvious to me, but social movements have fuzzy boundaries and decline doesn’t have to be consistent. Nevertheless answering this question was a post I was planning on write and the evidence seemed fairly damning to me—for instance:
Spikes in visiting the “Effective Altruism” Wikipedia page seem to mainly be in response to negative media coverage, such as the OpenAI board fallout or a Guardian Article about Wytham Abbey. Other Metrics like Forum engagement that were growing preFTX clearly spike and decline after the scandal period.
Other organisations similar to EA considering rebounding away. Apparently CE/AIM was considering this, and Rutger Bregman seems to be trying really hard to keep Moral Ambition free of EAs reputational orbit, which I think he’d be doing much less of if EAs prospects were more positive.
Previous community members leaving the Forum or EA in general, sometimes turning quite hostile to it. Some examples here are Habryka, Nuño Sempere, Nathan Young, Elizabeth from the more ‘rationalist’ side. I’ve noticed various people who were long term EAs, like Akash Wasil and John Halstead have deactivated their accounts. A lot of more left-wing EAs like Bob Jacobs seem to have started to move away too, or like Habiba moderate their stanc and relationship to EA.
This goes double so for leadership.
I think loads kf the community felt a leadership vacuum post FTX. Dustin has deactivated his account. Holden has left OP, gone quiet, and might not longer consider himself EA? Every so often Ben Todd tweets something which I can only interpret as “testing the waters before jumping ship”. I don’t think leadership of a thriving, growing movement acts this.
If you search “Effective Altruism” on almost any major social media site (X, Bluesky, Reddit, etc) I suspect the general sentiment toward EA will be strongly negative and probably worse than it was preFTX and staying that way.
There might be some counter evidence. Some metrics might have improved, and I know some surveys are showing mixed or positive things. I think Habryka’s point that reputation is evaluated lazily rings true to me even if I disagree on specifics.
But again, the above is my memory of a draft, and I’m not sure I’ll ever finish that post. I think hard data on a well formed version of the question would be good, but once again it’s not the question I was trying to get at with this post.
Thanks for adding more here :) I think that evidence is more persuasive, though still reads a little vibe-y and data-free, and involves reading intention into some actions that might not be there.
As I said, those bullet points were a memory of a draft so I don’t have the hard data to share on hand. But when dealing with social movements it’s always going to be somewhat vibesy—data will necessarily be observational and we can’t travel back in time and run RCTs on whether SBF commits fraud or not. And the case studies do show that declines can go on for a very long time post major crisis. It’s rare for movements to disappear overnight (The Levellers come closest of all the cases I found to that)
Fwiw I think that the general evidence does point to “EA is in decline” broadly understood, and that should be considered the null hypothesis at this point. I’d feel pretty gaslit if someone said EA was going swimmingly and unaffected by the tribulations of the last couple of years, perhaps less so if they think there’s been a bounce back after an initial decline but, you know, I’d want to see the data for that.
But as I said, it’s really not the (main) point of the post! I’d love to add my points to a post where someone did try and do a deep dive into that question.
I’d feel pretty gaslit if someone said EA was going swimmingly and unaffected by the tribulations of the last couple of years, perhaps less so if they think there’s been a bounce back after an initial decline but, you know, I’d want to see the data for that.
Although the Early OSP intervention at those universities could be influencing the outcomes—checking elite universities at which Early OSP wasn’t offered could control for this.
I should hope they’re influencing those outcomes, otherwise they’re wasting resources! ;)
But I guess you’re saying something like, ‘We can’t infer much about the health of EA based on this evidence because this is an area where people are actively trying to grow numbers, so naturally it’s improving’. But this argument feels circular. If that’s the standard, it would be pretty hard to provide evidence that meets your bar. Unless your claim is something like, ‘A healthy movement doesn’t need to actively try and grow itself because it’ll just naturally grow’?
More like: If EA is healthy, then groups that have been getting a consistent level of support should be as a class either stable or growing. That’s why I suggested looking at non-EOSP elite university groups—them being at least stable as a class would be evidence of general health. On the other hand, if their output is dropping despite holding investment steady, that would not be a great sign.
Ah, got you. I think I agree. I only shared the EOSP data since Chris seemed to think it was relevant.
For what it’s worth, my current take is that top-of-funnel growth has slowed in recent years, but bottom-of-funnel growth is holding up well — likely thanks to strong top-of-funnel numbers in earlier years and decent retention.
This view is mostly based on data from the Netherlands.
We’re fairly confident that intro course completions in NL surged in 2022, but have been declining since. Data collection isn’t perfect, but these are our approximate figures:
2021: 45
2022: 402
2023: 298
2024: 190
These numbers include completions from uni groups, the national intro course, and the virtual programme.
Meanwhile, bottom-of-funnel metrics — e.g. GWWC pledges — are looking strong:
Year
10% Pledge
Trial Pledge
2022
40
35
2023
36
52
2024
56
57
We haven’t publicly shared our strategy for 2025 yet, but long story short, we’re focusing on top-of-funnel growth.
I don’t think the claim “EA is in decline” is well-defended in this post. You link to a few naysayers here, but I don’t think that’s good evidence. “EA is in decline” is also self-fulfilling—it might decline if everyone’s saying it’s declining—so I expect some people say this because they want it to happen, not because they’ve reviewed the evidence and have concluded this is what’s happening.
Colleagues of mine can pull together more evidence against, but as two examples that are salient to me:
EA Global London 2025 is on track to be the biggest EA conference ever.
We expect to welcome more people to EA events (EAG, EAGx, EA Summits) this year than ever before.
I find that hard to square with “EA is in decline”. To be clear, I think the claim might be true, but it’s an important enough question that it deserves some more thoughtful study and data, rather than vibes on Twitter.
Hey Ollie, thanks for your feedback! It helped me understand some of the downvotes the post was getting which I was a bit confused by. I think you and perhaps others are interpreting the post as “Here are some case studies that show EA is in decline”, but that’s not what I was trying to write, it was more “EA is in decline, what historical cases can inform us about this?” I’m not really arguing for “Is EA in decline?” in the post, in fact I’m just assuming it and punting the empirical evidence for another time, since I was interested in bringing out the historical cases rather than EAs current state. So the tweets are meant to be indicative of mood/sentiment but not load bearing proof. I do see that the rhetorical flourish in the intro might have given a misleading impression, so I will edit that to make the point of the piece more clear.
As for why, I mean, it does just seem fairly obvious to me, but social movements have fuzzy boundaries and decline doesn’t have to be consistent. Nevertheless answering this question was a post I was planning on write and the evidence seemed fairly damning to me—for instance:
Spikes in visiting the “Effective Altruism” Wikipedia page seem to mainly be in response to negative media coverage, such as the OpenAI board fallout or a Guardian Article about Wytham Abbey. Other Metrics like Forum engagement that were growing preFTX clearly spike and decline after the scandal period.
Other organisations similar to EA considering rebounding away. Apparently CE/AIM was considering this, and Rutger Bregman seems to be trying really hard to keep Moral Ambition free of EAs reputational orbit, which I think he’d be doing much less of if EAs prospects were more positive.
Previous community members leaving the Forum or EA in general, sometimes turning quite hostile to it. Some examples here are Habryka, Nuño Sempere, Nathan Young, Elizabeth from the more ‘rationalist’ side. I’ve noticed various people who were long term EAs, like Akash Wasil and John Halstead have deactivated their accounts. A lot of more left-wing EAs like Bob Jacobs seem to have started to move away too, or like Habiba moderate their stanc and relationship to EA.
This goes double so for leadership. I think loads kf the community felt a leadership vacuum post FTX. Dustin has deactivated his account. Holden has left OP, gone quiet, and might not longer consider himself EA? Every so often Ben Todd tweets something which I can only interpret as “testing the waters before jumping ship”. I don’t think leadership of a thriving, growing movement acts this.
If you search “Effective Altruism” on almost any major social media site (X, Bluesky, Reddit, etc) I suspect the general sentiment toward EA will be strongly negative and probably worse than it was preFTX and staying that way. There might be some counter evidence. Some metrics might have improved, and I know some surveys are showing mixed or positive things. I think Habryka’s point that reputation is evaluated lazily rings true to me even if I disagree on specifics.
But again, the above is my memory of a draft, and I’m not sure I’ll ever finish that post. I think hard data on a well formed version of the question would be good, but once again it’s not the question I was trying to get at with this post.
Thanks for adding more here :) I think that evidence is more persuasive, though still reads a little vibe-y and data-free, and involves reading intention into some actions that might not be there.
No worries Ollie, thanks for the feedback :)
As I said, those bullet points were a memory of a draft so I don’t have the hard data to share on hand. But when dealing with social movements it’s always going to be somewhat vibesy—data will necessarily be observational and we can’t travel back in time and run RCTs on whether SBF commits fraud or not. And the case studies do show that declines can go on for a very long time post major crisis. It’s rare for movements to disappear overnight (The Levellers come closest of all the cases I found to that)
Fwiw I think that the general evidence does point to “EA is in decline” broadly understood, and that should be considered the null hypothesis at this point. I’d feel pretty gaslit if someone said EA was going swimmingly and unaffected by the tribulations of the last couple of years, perhaps less so if they think there’s been a bounce back after an initial decline but, you know, I’d want to see the data for that.
But as I said, it’s really not the (main) point of the post! I’d love to add my points to a post where someone did try and do a deep dive into that question.
I can’t seem to find it now, but I think someone calculated that funding to EA was higher in 2023 and 2024 than any year except 2022.
I agree with this fwiw, that seems fair
I think it would be helpful to be able to see the number of applications to EA global over time compared to attendance.
And the amount spent in ads, I think X ads to promote EAG might be a new thing
I don’t think raw numbers are the right metric. Talent matters as well.
A more important question to me is, “How well are groups at elite universities going?”.
Pretty well, according to Joris from the groups team at CEA.
Although the Early OSP intervention at those universities could be influencing the outcomes—checking elite universities at which Early OSP wasn’t offered could control for this.
I should hope they’re influencing those outcomes, otherwise they’re wasting resources! ;)
But I guess you’re saying something like, ‘We can’t infer much about the health of EA based on this evidence because this is an area where people are actively trying to grow numbers, so naturally it’s improving’. But this argument feels circular. If that’s the standard, it would be pretty hard to provide evidence that meets your bar. Unless your claim is something like, ‘A healthy movement doesn’t need to actively try and grow itself because it’ll just naturally grow’?
Or maybe I’m completely misunderstanding you?
More like: If EA is healthy, then groups that have been getting a consistent level of support should be as a class either stable or growing. That’s why I suggested looking at non-EOSP elite university groups—them being at least stable as a class would be evidence of general health. On the other hand, if their output is dropping despite holding investment steady, that would not be a great sign.
Ah, got you. I think I agree. I only shared the EOSP data since Chris seemed to think it was relevant.
For what it’s worth, my current take is that top-of-funnel growth has slowed in recent years, but bottom-of-funnel growth is holding up well — likely thanks to strong top-of-funnel numbers in earlier years and decent retention.
This view is mostly based on data from the Netherlands.
We’re fairly confident that intro course completions in NL surged in 2022, but have been declining since. Data collection isn’t perfect, but these are our approximate figures:
2021: 45
2022: 402
2023: 298
2024: 190
These numbers include completions from uni groups, the national intro course, and the virtual programme.
Meanwhile, bottom-of-funnel metrics — e.g. GWWC pledges — are looking strong:
We haven’t publicly shared our strategy for 2025 yet, but long story short, we’re focusing on top-of-funnel growth.
Hmm… The continued decline in 2024 is worrying.
Same. That’s why I’m glad CEA seems to agree with us about the need for a focus on sustainable growth.
If OSP is successful, I expect it’d be scaled to more elite universities.